. >> moving on to afghanistan, you had a very interesting piece in "the new york times" in which you said that the administration should take its queues in terms of its withdraw in afghanistan from nixon and kissinger's withdrawal from vietnam. that is not usually looked upon as a model of success. explain what you meant. >> they tried to extricate the u.s. in the war. they tried to tiptoe away and leave the local parties to keep fighting by themselves. it almost worked. but after the u.s. got out, the whole house of cards came falling down because congress wouldn't let the government support saigon because the local parties weren't able to defend themselves and so forth. i think essentially, if the obama administration can tiptoe out of the ground combat in afghanistan while continuing to support the regime in kabul and continuing to bash the enemies and so forth, essentially you could get extrication even as essentially the war continues. that strikes me as the least bad option at this point. >> is that realistic? >> in your piece you say that the problem is we shouldn't be talking